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Google has introduced a search engine for online retailers. Priced at US$50,000 annually, the Software as a Service offering is aimed at high-end e-commerce operations that want to provide customers looking for a particular product on their site with more accurate search results. Search is arguably one of the weakest features on most retailers' si...

Google on Thursday announced the launch of Google Dashboard, an online utility that offers one view into all Google products a customer uses. This is intended to give users more transparency and control over their data, the Internet search giant claimed.

Consumer Reports has unleashed its findings on toxic levels of Bisphenol A (BPA) in food packaging on a largely unsuspecting public. Before the report, many felt the BPA danger had passed with the introduction of BPA-free baby bottles and so-called microwave-safe plastics. Not so, says the report: Certain canned foods contain high levels of BPA -- but it may also be present in alternative packaging...

By and large, IT favors grand pronouncements and overheated rhetoric, and the industry abounds with "unprecedented" efforts firmly rooted in precedent and "unique" solutions fashioned from the commonest clay. Is that the case with Cisco, EMC and VMware's new Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) coalition? Decidedly not, and for a number of reasons.

Customer relationships are damaged when companies hear too late about customer concerns or issues to do anything to repair them. Even worse, many crucial concerns aren't being heard by the right people at an organization. For example, are managers aware of which customers are unhappy? Did an employee treat a customer unfairly? What are the specific factors that caused a customer to leave? Which of your organization's services matter most to customers, by priority?...

Unified Communications (UC) holds enormous promise as a coherent, integrated approach to incorporating the full spectrum of business communications modalities, and as direct path to cut through "communications clutter" resulting in accelerated time-to-action. It also offers a cost-effective way to more directly connect the company to its customers, employees to employees, and more tightly bind business partners and suppliers. In the September 2009 Aberdeen Report "Unified Communications: Gaining a Competitive Advantage While on the Move," reducing human latency (the time delay in initiating and reaching a contact) was revealed as a key benefit of UC, resulting in measurably increased efficiency and improved customer intimacy.

Cisco is broadening its footprint with a major move into the cloud computing space. The company has formed a far-reaching partnership with EMC -- a joint venture in which VMware, a majority owned subsidiary of EMC, will also play a large role. Intel's Xeon processors and other data center technology are also a significant component to this offerin...

AT&T Wireless has filed suit against Verizon over the latter's latest ad campaign. That campaign, which claims Verizon has five times more U.S. 3G wireless network coverage than AT&T, shows two maps of the United States side by side, one with each company's coverage.

AT&T Wireless has filed suit against Verizon over the latter's latest ad campaign. That campaign, which claims Verizon has five times more U.S. 3G wireless network coverage than AT&T, shows two maps of the United States side by side, one with each company's coverage.

AT&T Wireless has filed suit against Verizon over the latter's latest ad campaign. That campaign, which claims Verizon has five times more U.S. 3G wireless network coverage than AT&T, shows two maps of the United States side by side, one with each company's coverage.

White space replaces the sky-blue color scheme in MSN.com's new redesign, which Microsoft began previewing Wednesday before it becomes an official re-launch sometime in early 2010 ...

PayPal on Tuesday opened up a set of APIs that will allow developers to integrate its payment capabilities within applications Typically, online shoppers have to visit PayPal's site to complete purchases. The new functionality will let them complete their transaction without leaving a shopping site or game -- even allowing those who don't already h...

Data migrations these days have become a necessary evil in every IT environment. The rapid rate at which hardware and software becomes outdated, coupled with a need to save costs by taking old assets off the books as soon as possible, means that data migrations are something no one can avoid. Vendors have tried to provide tools to make this task a...

I just finished reading The Black Swan, a book that has been on my list since it came out in 2007, and I highly recommend it, though it is not easy reading. There is a great deal of set up before you get to the whole point of the book in the last 50 pages The Black Swan is about uncertainty in the real world, and the subtitle explains it all: "The...

In a move that resembles a major food vendor giving away its prizerecipe -- minus the secret sauce -- to all of its customers and competitors, Yahoo onMonday donated the source code for its Traffic Server software to theApache Software Foundation through the Apache Incubator Project Yahoo hopes to grow a community of productusers who return to use ...

This column is a response to "How to Solve the Net Neutrality Issue," by Sonia Arrison Free marketeers' primary argument against Net neutrality is that a government watchdog role in protecting neutrality is bound to be "political" -- and that any government agency will ultimately start a slippery slide to full-bore regulation of the Internet. This...

Microsoft has slashed the prices of its SaaS email offering and its online business productivity suite, making them more competitive with the low-cost premier edition of Google Apps Exchange Online as a standalone app is now available for US$5 per month instead of $10, while the Business Productivity Online Suite, which bundles online versions of E...

Handset maker Sony Ericsson on Tuesday announced the new Xperia X10 smartphone. ...

Can the Web's big-time masters of malware really be tracked down? How risky is cloud computing to network security? And what challenges await the Obama administration's plans to lock down the nation's electronic infrastructure -- while at the same time creating a "smart grid?" ...

There have been several suggestions by China, Brazil, Russia and other countries, and by a U.N. Commission headed by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz, as well as by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development for a new global reserve currency to replace the U.S. dollar. Increasingly, the media are running stories and comments about the "demise of the dollar."